Astrophysics > Astrophysics of Galaxies

Title:Distribution of satellite galaxies in high redshift groups

Abstract: We use galaxy groups at redshifts between 0.4 and 1.0 selected from the Great
Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) to study the color-morphological
properties of satellite galaxies, and investigate possible alignment between
the distribution of the satellites and the orientation of their central galaxy.
We confirm the bimodal color and morphological type distribution for satellite
galaxies at this redshift range: the red and blue classes corresponds to the
early and late morphological types respectively, and the early-type satellites
are on average brighter than the late-type ones. Furthermore, there is a {\it
morphological conformity} between the central and satellite galaxies: the
fraction of early-type satellites in groups with an early-type central is
higher than those with a late-type central galaxy. This effect is stronger at
smaller separations from the central galaxy. We find a marginally significant
signal of alignment between the major axis of the early-type central galaxy and
its satellite system, while for the late-type centrals no significant alignment
signal is found. We discuss the alignment signal in the context of shape
evolution of groups.